Design of economic analysis service for housing corporations

Abstract

Web application is software, which is accessed via web browser over internet. Often it is run mainly on the server and only some minor user interaction parts are executed on the browser. This gives leverage over traditionally distributed software on many cases, for example: applications are easy to update, there are no dependencies to many different platforms and also less integration or synchronization problems with the server. Web applications are a rising trend of the SaaS (Software as a Service) phenomenon.

Modern web applications have come a long way from simple HTML pages. They are heavily used distributed systems including many complex features. This causes high demands to the availability, the maintainability and to the design. One of the challenges in the implementation is the often required distributed architecture. Larger web applications must be distributed across multiple servers for scalability of performance and availability. Especially database dependency makes this challenging.

The most common high level architecture model is three-tiered: model (data), view (presentation) and control (logic). Models like this make it easier to insulate different areas from each other and thus lead to easier maintainability and scalability.

This thesis focuses on designing one specific web application from scratch with a high demand server environment. Business behind the application sets the requirements for the application and they are introduced and addressed first. From them is derived the basic layout and plans for the application itself. After application design, a suitable database and server platforms are planned to support the application's requirements. Finally made plans are presented and evaluated against various scenarios to ensure they fulfil the original business requirements.